


This Is Not What I Had Imagined

by petrichorstarlight (goldkirk)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Mental Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldkirk/pseuds/petrichorstarlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Congrats, you're dead. Welcome to the club."</p>
<p>"This is not happening. I can't be dead AND crazy!" he protested.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not What I Had Imagined

**Author's Note:**

> I'm throwing this out as a oneshot right now, because I'm in the middle of Aftermath. But I'll come back and continue it later.

Everyone's a little messed up, even if they may not seem like it on the outside. He could vouch for that on the day of his state-level math competition. To everyone else it had seemed like he was doing fine. Brilliant kid, bright future, flying through high school. Cheerful, bright, happy...except underneath it all he was being eaten alive by the stress and his need to be perfect all the time so as not to disappoint anyone. He felt isolated and didn't tell anyone, even thought others would have sympathized and tried to help him.

Unfortunately, no one found out until it was almost too late and he had already collapsed on the stage.

* * *

The first thing he was aware of was that he felt surprisingly nonexistent. That was weird. He could see that he had a body, but he couldn't feel it. Had he gotten a broken neck or something? He tried scrunching his nose in confusion and realized he couldn't feel his face either. 

He was floating (or maybe he wasn't, but it felt like he was since he couldn't feel anything) somewhere dark, and appeared to be dressed in white. He couldn't feel himself, and he didn't hear or see anything. Nothing. At all. And it was unsettling. If he tried thinking about it, could he talk? Was he paralyzed or just numb?

"Hello?" he finally heard his voice say. "Where am I? What the hell is going on?"

"Congrats, you're dead. Welcome to the club."

A voice. That was new. 

"Where are you?" he called out.

"Right here." The faint form of a girl was suddenly visible a few feet in front of him. She was dressed in white as well, her wavy black hair a stark contrast to the shimmering white of her jumpsuit.

"Okay, that's not weird at all," he mumbled. "Girl pops out of nowhere, it's all cool."

"You can see me?" she asked. "Oh thank goodness. No one else can."

"There are others here?"

"Well, yeah. You didn't think you were the only dead person alive, did you?" She paused for a moment and frowned. "Wait, that doesn't make sense. Sorry. Figures of speech get hard when you're dead."

"This is not happening."

"Sorry, but it is."

"I can't be dead! How can we be dead?"

"Look, I don't want to be dead either, but at least I'm accepting the situation."

"We're almost transparent and wearing tacky white jumpsuits in the middle of a void. This can't be the afterlife."

"Why can't you just accept it and get on with adjusting?"

"Because I don't want to be dead! If we're dead, what are the voices that we can hear?"

"Dead spirits." The girl looked disinterested.

"They're talking about pizza, last night's football game, and intensive care units."

"So they're weird dead spirits."

"But I'm hearing them talk about stuff like they're watching a recap! We don't even have air, never mind any kind of TV."

"So you're crazy."

"I can't be dead AND crazy!" he protested. "Why are you so determined to be dead, anyway?"

"Because living sucks. Might as well be dead, it's not really any worse than living was. At least here it's peaceful. You don't have anything to worry about."

"You also don't have anything, period."

The girl shrugged.

"I say we aren't dead," he declared. "This doesn't make sense."

"Life doesn't make sense either," she pointed out."Who ever said death would?"

"This doesn't sound like being dead, though. Maybe we're both in comas in the hospital and that's why we can hear those voices and stuff. I've read about that before."

"Or maybe you're just wishing to not be dead," she muttered.

"Look, you can be dead if you want! But I'm assuming I'm alive until proven otherwise, and I think I'm going to wake up."

"Suit yourself. I'd rather stay here. Isn't it easier than dealing with all the problems and people who don't care? There's no stress. No responsibilities and no tragedies. Isn't this better?"

He did see her point. If he was dead, there would be no more anxiety and stress about being good enough for everyone's expectations or trying to keep up with all the competitions and work. But if he just...existed... "Yeah," he said slowly, "all the calm here is nice. But I'm not finished, there's a lot left to do. I know a lot of people die young but I don't want to give up yet. There's a lot in life that's good, and I want to experience it. If I wake up alive again, I'm going to fix my problems and then live my life fully. So if you have to make a choice to get out of here, then I'm making it now. I don't want to be dead. I choose to still be alive."

Contrary to his vague hopes, there was no dramatic moment of him fading out of the wierd void place and waking up.

The girl clapped sarcastically. "Bravo, nice speech. Useless, apparently, but I guess it was worth a try."

He looked at her for a minute. "Are you really that okay with being dead?"

"I chose it. So yeah, I'm okay with my decision. And even if I'm not, it's not like I can change what I did. You can never know exactly how your decisions will work out until you live them. The only thing I can do now is live with the choice I made."

"Live with it? I thought you were dead."

"Ha-ha. Funny. I told you figures of speech are hard."

"Yeah." They were silent for a minute. Or a second. Or maybe seventy years. Who knew in the void? "You chose it? Like I just chose to be alive?"

The girl laughed, but it sounded pained. "No, man. I didn't choose to be dead, I chose to die. There's a difference."

"You killed yourself?"

"Apparently."

"Why?"

"Because I was sick of living when there was no point and no end."

"But—"

"No. I didn't kill myself because I hated life just so I could spend the afterlife getting told by a blonde Beatle how awesome life can be."

"Okay," he said, "fair enough. I don't agree with you, but I'll spare you the lecture. If we are dead, it doesn't matter anyway. How about if we end up actually alive, and I run into you again,  _then_ I get to try and convince you.

"That's not—"

"If you really believe you're dead—and if you really do want to be dead—then what's the problem? You don't have anything to worry about."

"I..." she glared at him. She didn't want to back down from a challenge, but she also didn't want to admit her own fear and secret desire, now that she was dead, to be alive, since she'd taken the opposite stance on it. "Okay. Fine."

They shook on it. He looked behind him at the still-nothingness.

"Hey," he frowned. "Does it seem like the voices are getting louder to you?"

"No."

"I can hear other things now too...and look, it's getting brighter!"

"No it's not," she said. Armin looked back at her.

"What do you mean, yeah it—oh," he said, surprised. "You're fading..."

"I'm not the one fading, you are."

"What? Does that mean...maybe I'm waking up?"

"I don't know. I guess. Good luck, wherever you're going. Thanks for talking to me. Thanks for actually hearing me." she said, her voice getting faint as everything got brighter around him.

"Wait—" he tried to shout, tried to hold on, but it was too late. The void, and the girl, were gone, and he could feel his body again—sore, tired, uncomfortable. It was a bit hard to breathe. Where was he? What had happened?

He opened his eyes, and saw a hospital room.

He wasn't dead. He was awake.

* * *

 

**Brook Acres Mental Hospital, Adolescent Ward**

Patient Information:

_Armin Arlert, age 16. Admitted for anxiety and stress. Admitted to Sina Hospital after collapsing from a severe asthma attack (which caused him to stop breathing temporarily), caused by a stress-induced panic attack. Apparently a regular occurence for the patient, though not usually that severe._

Patient Information:

_Mina Carolina, age 15. Admitted for depression and suicidal thoughts. Admitted to St. Maria's Hospital after a suicide attempt. Possible self-injury risk. Selective mute for seven months._

* * *

 

Mina stepped off the elevator, guided by the nurse, onto the floor that was now supposed to be her home away from home as some adults who knew nothing about her life were apparently going to fix her messed-up brain. While she had been a little regretful about her own death, she hadn't expected to come back. She still wasn't entirely sure she was glad about that. It was going to be a rough process, being here, she was sure. But she had resigned herself to her fate.

As she walked down the hallway to her new room, Mina stopped suddenly, frozen in place as her eyes locked on someone she'd never expected to see again.

It was him. It was the boy from the void. He was  _here._ With her. On this floor.

As she stood there, unaware of the nurse's attempts to get her moving again, the boy turned and saw her. He too, froze in place, and she saw the book he was holding slip from his hands. 

"It's you."


End file.
